Syria and the ‘Zio-American plot’

Denying the authenticity of the Syrian uprising is a central plank of the Assad regime’s propaganda message – that the whole thing, as the official news agency put it recently, is a “Zio-American” plot.

To anyone who has been following events in Syria closely since last March, the regime’s conspiracy claims are not only ridiculous but terribly insulting to the thousands of protesters who have risked (and often lost) their lives in the struggle against dictatorship. Even so, there’s a small chorus of westerners who seem to be echoing the Assad line.

“Arguably, the most important component in this struggle,” Aisling Byrne wrote in an article last week, “has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a ‘killing machine’ led by the ‘monster’ Assad.”

Arguably, my foot. Information about the protests has sometimes been wrong – as always happens in conflicts, especially when media access is so severely restricted – but to suggest that this has led to a “largely false narrative” is utter nonsense.

Byrne’s article has been doing the rounds on the internet –Counterpunch, the Asia Times and Countercurrents – as well as being touted enthusiastically inside Syria by the Assad regime. Running to more than 4,700 words, it’s probably the fullest exposition yet of the grand international conspiracy theory.

Of course, it’s true lots of countries have been reacting to the uprising in Syria and some are certainly trying to influence the outcome. Given Syria’s strategic importance, that is to be expected. Reacting to events, though, is not the same as orchestrating things according to some pre-conceived plan – which is what the Assad regime claims is happening, and what Byrne also seems to imply:

“What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime ‘more compatible’ with US interests in the region.

“The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009.”

There’s no harm in discussing or criticising what foreign powers may be up to with regard to Syria, even if Byrne draws some rather fanciful conclusions. Any attempts to prevent the Syrian people from making their own choices ought to be resisted, too. The overall effect of such articles, though, is to delegitimise the popular struggle – which is unfair to the protesters and also plays into the hands of the regime.

But what of the article’s author, Aisling Byrne? She is projects co-ordinator for the Conflicts Forum, based in Beirut. Its director isAlastair Crooke, a former British intelligence officer who until a few years ago was heavily involved in British and European diplomacy relating to Israel/Palestine. Among many other things, he took part in clandestine meetings with Hamas.

Crooke left his government job and founded the Conflicts Forum in 2004 “to open a new relationship between the west and the Muslim world”, mainly through promoting dialogue with Islamist movements – something that western governments have often been reluctant to do. Members of the forum’s advisory board include Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee, and Azzam Tamimi, regarded as an unofficial voice for Hamas in Britain.

“While facing increasingly intractable problems in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan and elsewhere,” Conflicts Forumsays on its website, “we [ie western governments] immobilise ourselves by turning away from the homegrown political forces that have the power to resolve these crises.”

Judging by Byrne’s article and another by Crooke himself in the Guardian last November, though, Conflicts Forum seems oddly reluctant to engage with the “homegrown political forces” in Syria.

There’s an inconsistency and selectivity here that is also apparent among sections of the more traditionalist left. Pro-western dictators like Ben Ali and Mubarak are considered fair game, but when it comes to toppling contrarian dictators like Gaddafi and Assad there’s lingering sympathy for them.

In Syria’s case this is further complicated by viewing the uprising through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For instance, abriefing paper on Conflicts Forum’s website examining Hizbullah’s continuing support for the Assad regime says:

“Just as Hizbullah viewed the 2009 protests in Iran as a ‘bid to destabilise the country’s Islamic regime’ by means of a US-orchestrated ‘velvet revolution’, the protests in Syria are branded a form of ‘collusion’ with outside powers who seek to replace Asad’s rule with ‘another regime similar to the moderate Arab regimes that are ready to sign any capitulation agreement with Israel’…

“Echoing Hizbullah’s stance on the Iran protests is Nasrallah’s characterisation of the US role in the Syrian uprising as an extension of the July War and the Gaza War. Since the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine had foiled the ‘New Middle East’ scheme in both these military aggressions, Washington was ‘trying to reintroduce [it] through other gates,’ such as Syria.

“With this in mind, attempts to overthrow the Assad regime are considered a ‘service’ to American and Israeli interests.”

Such views are not confined to Hizbullah, however. But how realistic are they? Many neocons hoped the invasion of Iraq would deliver a pro-Israel government there. It didn’t, and instead it strengthened Iran.

Tunisia is no more favourably disposed towards Israel than it was under Ben Ali. Nor is Libya. Nor is Egypt – if anything, less so. And a democratic Syria would still have the same territorial issues with Israel – the occupied Golan Heights, etc – that it has now. In any case Israel seems an odd reason for denying Syrians a chance to determine their own future.

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§ 7 Responses to Syria and the ‘Zio-American plot’

a democratic syria would certainly be wonderful for the syrian people but to think the usa and israel and their minions are in support of such a thing is beyond idealism and borders on wishful irrationalism …that is true whether it is believed and accepted by witting or unwitting agents of the 1%…

and rest assured, agents, that if some americans – with outside help from russia, israel or china? – protested against *and* violently attacked the regime here in the usa , whether led by bush or obama, there would be many americans who celebrated such “democratic” regime change…

of course i read it…why would i respond if not? there was nothing in what you quoted of that other writer, nor anything in what i said, that was a denial of the fact that people in syria – at least many many people,whether it’s a majority or not seems to be a matter of faith/belief/ideology – who are disgusted with the regime and want change…the same is true for iran and many other places…the problem is that whether they are called zio-nazis , american infiltrators ,the gay liberation front or the boy scouts, people representing foreign interest that have nothing to do with the wishes of those syrians or iranians but more to do with getting rid a regime they don’t like and replacing with with one that is compliant – or so they hope – are playing an ever larger role in fomenting, via money and/or agents said change and this is only good for those who don’t care what happens as long as the regime they hate or find seriously lacking is removed…

i think that is stupid, even if ideally sincere…further, i think given a choice of lesser evils, the people of syria would select the government over the wannabe rebel replacement…it would be nice if they had an opportunity to make the kind of selection that people in the “free” world make all the time: selecting lesser evils…with the interference of the west, especially the us and israel, all they are guaranteed is evil…

Sorry, I should have asked can you read. But both questions are irrelevant. It is pointless asking if you are mentally impaired when evidently you are morally deceased. Yeah, why choose lesser evil when you can have evil in all its purity. Only the Syrians would be stupid enough to want to replace their experience of pristine terror with something as lacklustre as ‘the kind of selection people in the free world make’. Don’t Syrians know how terrible we have it here in Britain the US?

Israel is not the reason that Assad has not be toppled! The Assads are a more organized Military Government than Gadaffi! Libia was an illusion and any competent gun man could have toppled that “BS” governmebnt at any time. Assad is a ‘Doctor” by traqde and his father was his cornerstone! If the Syrian people can do exactly what the Egyptian people did, then Assad and his people will go ‘By-By”! Israel will, and I agree with you, continue to have to fight all of Syria! Your article was factual and complete. I am just agreeing with you in content! In a Dictorial structure or Military Structure, one never knows who ones next leader is! I have worked in and around such structures many years ago! In the third world, a bullet can go a long way to very quickly replacing any Dictator! There are a number of Syrian Generals who could bring down Assad! It is whether any one of them is ready yet! Israel will never give up the Golan and should not! As a man who understands thwe third world dictator, I clearly advocate assassination as the means to overthrow a Dictator. Just remember, it is the ‘Devil you know, verses the devil you do not know” and that is basically the entire argument, Sincerely bigmikecraft